Tracking study locates several lions in Santa Cruz Mountains

The ground is not wet enough to expose footprints, and the cat's scent doesn't carry in the dry air allowing a hound to sniff it out.

So says UC Santa Cruz ecologist Chris Wilmers, whose research team began a search for lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains late last spring.

"It was a little frustrating initially," said Wilmers, whose first few months consisted of long drives on winding roads above Davenport, looking for signs of the region's top predator but coming up short. "We were seeing something every day, a track or a scrape, not enough."

By the time the winter months came, however, Wilmers and his team had caught up with four mountain lions and fitted each with a high-tech tracking collar, part of a first-ever look into lion behavior in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Less than a year into what is expected to be a five-year study, the research has discovered more about the elusive animal than the local lore has yielded over centuries.

The local population

By the team's estimates, 28 adult lions and as many as 42 cubs make their home in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which run from south of San Francisco to northern Monterey County.

With the range skirting the populous San Francisco Bay Area, the animals inevitably overlap the course of humans but are generally uninterested in human affairs. The animals are seldom seen, outside a chance encounter with a hiker or a rare visit to a neighborhood, as was the case last year when a lion mauled a Chihuahua outside Watsonville and another reportedly visited the Capitola Mall.

The GPS devices on the collars of the Santa Cruz lions indicate that the first male under observation, a 133-pound 5-year-old known as No. 3, regularly passes through the Bonny Doon area. Every few weeks, it crosses Bonny Doon Road, near Pine Flat Road, as it roams a roughly 70-square-mile range -- defined by Wilder Ranch State Park to the south, Big Basin State Park to the north, Highway 1 to the west and Empire Grade Road to the east.

"He's sort of darting through Bonny Doon at night to get from one area to another," said Wilmers, an assistant professor of environmental studies who maps the lion's whereabouts in his UCSC office. "Nobody's in danger."

Since male lions don't tolerate one another and inhabit distinct territories, Wilmers suspects six other males have room for claims in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The latest to be collared is a 118-pound, 3-year-old male who lives north of the first, in Big Basin State Park and beyond.

For every male, there are three females, the researchers say. Two have been collared and live in the hills above Davenport.

One is believed to have had a cub with the first male that she is now raising. The same male now appears to be courting the other female.

"They're kind of hanging out together," said Wilmers, noting their intertwining GPS points on his map.

Health of the lions

The team's initial research suggests the community of lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains is in good shape and is not unlike other populations in California -- which have been thriving since hunting was banned decades ago.

The density of the local cats, their sizes and their breeding habits mirror what's been seen in other areas, says Doug Updike, the statewide mountain lion coordinator for the Department of Fish and Game, which is assisting with the Santa Cruz study, as is the Felidae Conservation Fund.

According to Updike, between 4,000 and 6,000 lions live in California. Male lions can reach about 8 feet long and weigh between 120 and 140 pounds on average, while females are significantly smaller.

"From what's being caught and what's being tracked in the Santa Cruz Mountains, it looks like a relatively healthy picture," Updike said.

Still, there are concerns that local lions don't have enough ways to move in and out of the region. The development that surrounds the Santa Cruz Mountains, along the San Francisco Peninsula and south of San Jose, may keep the animals from interacting with lions outside the area and preventing a diverse and healthy gene pool.

Inbreeding can lead to infertility and susceptibility to disease, wildlife experts say, which has been observed in isolated communities elsewhere.

Wilmers' team plans to watch the Santa Cruz lions to see just how much they're mixing with other populations, like animals east of Gilroy, toward Henry W. Coe State Park, and south of the Pajaro Valley, toward Big Sur.

The young male currently living outside Davenport is a likely candidate for travel and will soon be collared, the researchers say, because the other males will almost certainly chase it out.

Updike says knowing how the animals get to other regions is important so travel corridors can be identified and kept free of human development.

"We want to have the data to give to county boards of supervisors and planning commissions," he said, "and preserve the space for lions."

The lion routine

For now, Wilmers' team is focused on what the lions are doing locally.

The GPS unit on the first male recently showed the cat spending several days near Laguna Road north of Wilder Ranch, causing Paul Houghtaling, one of the researchers, to head to the site to figure out why.

The collars on the lions, in addition to holding GPS devices, are equipped with what's known as an accelerometer, a device that records the acceleration of the animal and employs the same technology as Nintendo's Wii video game system. The unit allows researchers to track caloric needs of the animal and virtually every movement, from rolling in the grass to stalking prey.

A short drive up a dirt road and a half-mile trek through a wooded expanse, Houghtaling arrived at his destination. Here, he found just what he had suspected: the remains of a lion kill.

"The lion probably made the kill there," Houghtaling said, pointing to a small hill above the thicket of willows he stood in, "then dragged the animal into here."

The skull and vertebrae of a wild pig were in plain view.

"The lion probably sat here for a couple days and gorged, then he might have gone 10 days without eating," Houghtaling said.

The researchers also have found the remains of a deer along the path of one of the collared females recently.

The attack caused the collar to come off the female lion, meaning, once again, the research team will be back on its search for a cat, looking for prints along logging roads and a scent to unleash the dogs on.

The hounds, as they've done before, will inevitably chase the cat up a tree, where the researchers will tranquilize it with a dart gun and reattach the collar.

Wilmers says the first year of the study is intended to work out such logistics.

"We've definitely learned how to catch a lion," he said. "We'll see what else."

California mountain lions

The mountain lion, also known as a cougar, puma or panther, is a member of the felidae family and is the second largest cat native to the Americas. (The jaguar is the largest.)

The lions, which weigh up to 160 pounds and feed primarily on deer, are found throughout California, but keep mostly to themselves. Human interactions are uncommon and just 16 mountain lion attacks have been documented in the state since 1890, none in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The lions are a 'specially protected mammal' in California

and cannot be hunted.

More information on California mountains lions is available on the state Department of Fish and Game Web site at www.dfg.ca.gov/keepmewild/lion.html.